Since the juggernaut of the ChatGPT debut,  I am seeing all kinds of content that are clearly being generated by AI. As I noted this, my thought was: “Being efficient is very different from being effective.”I now find myself saying this a lot as I talk with clients and prospects about the growing ubiquity of AI and how they can best harness it.  

There’s no question that AI-generated content is streamlining the content creation process. But the ability to spot and filter it is also gaining steam. 

This also means that a lot of people are using generative AI to scale the same mistakes they’ve already been making – but with automation. 

The trick to creating effective content with AI is not that it makes it easier for a marketer or salesperson to generate it, but to create content that’s unique and highly relevant to the recipient. The recipient doesn’t care about your elaborate prompt and the subsequent message. The recipient cares about their problems and headaches; they care about the solutions to solve them.  

If you’ve made generative AI a part of our content creation process, how much is the recipient’s pain point figuring into your messaging? Your message may sound great, but is it truly moving the needle with engagement and conversions?

I’ve spoken with teams that have been surprised that AI-generated copy has not impacted their bottom line. My follow-up questions have been: Was your content personalized? Was it geared toward recipients’ roles and challenges? Did your content reference a possible solution? 

The answer has generally been “no”. The teams I’ve spoken with typically spend more time troubleshooting their AI prompts than personalizing the output, and the latter results in much better engagement metrics. 

AI-generated content will obviously improve with time. But now that people have had a couple of months to test the latest tools, it should be more clear by now if generative AI has in fact created a marketing and sales lift – or not. What do your numbers say?  

Even if you’re not seeing an increase in your conversion rate, an increase in engagement may indicate that an AI content tool is making it possible to create more effective messaging, not just saving you time. 

So the question for all of you using generative AI: Are you seeing just efficiency increases? Or, are you also seeing evidence of effectiveness? Generative AI, if you’re using it well, should mean improvements in both areas – not just the former.